Traditional notions of medicine and classic representations of surgery aren’t anything that surgery simulation series Dark Cut has ever been interested in conveying in its games, and Dark Cut 3 is here to demonstrate this fact. You play as none other than a surgeon able to travel through time and space through means of an overly-intelligent (and sometimes smug) computer system , uplinking to patients throughout history that need your help. Some gruesome and highly graphic surgery ensues, challenging your dexterity and coolness under pressure to the limit in what is easily the best Dark Cut game yet.

Should you for some reason be an avid fan of the technicalities and procedures involved in the incredibly specific source of entertainment that is flash-base open-heart surgery simulation, then it could very well be your lucky day. If you don’t already know about the series, Operate Now brings you operation simulations of all kinds, but Operate Now: Heart Surgery is probably the one that can be viewed as having the highest stakes. Plus, heart surgery is just sexier than lesser procedures like appendix or knee surgery, right?

There was a time when surgery went on strictly behind the swinging doors of an operating theatre and the surgical (and general medical) profession was relatively guarded and mysterious. With all of the TV-based medical dramas over the years, however, as well as alarmingly frequent media coverage of the inner workings of hospitals, we think that we’re more in the know than ever about various medical procedures. Quoting Web MD to your GP and expecting them to take your 3 minutes of careful research on the internet over their decades of medical experience isn’t going to fly, though, since all that doctoring malarkey should be left to people that have had the appropriate training. The same is true of the surgical profession, but this doesn’t mean that we can’t play numerous surgery simulator games like Amateur Surgeon 2 or Operate Now! Heart Surgery, does it? It most certainly does not, and after playing the latter of the two aforementioned games, I had a few notes to jot down as to just how the sequel of the game could be a better experience for players all round.

Surgery and entertainment don't immediately stick in one's head as being a match made in heaven. We're not talking about surgery-based TV shows such as Grey's Anatomy or ER here however, but true, real-life surgery. The operating room simply isn't something to joke about on most occasions. That is unless you're talking about the remarkably over-the-top and sort-of realistic Surgeon Simulator 2013 in which you stumble about the operating room, controlling the fingers of a surgeon's operating hand independently and generally making a mess of the OR whilst apparently saving a patient that most definitely would have died instantly in real life. Who needs real life when you have crazy surgery simulator games, though? No one, that's who, which is why this entertaining and hugely popular fiction deserves a sequel. Before the game's developers go head-first into mimicking the original however, some attention definitely deserves to be paid to making sure Surgery Simulator 2014 has improvements and additions galore, addressing the things that Surgeon Simulator 2013 seemed to lack.